Isn’t this the way it is already? At the very least the ISP has to know your phone number to connect the service…

P.S. I should have been clearer in the post about the makeup of a hypothetical email distribution list. Let’s say you’ve got a textfile contrasting the deliberate understaffing and other malfeasance at the hospital where you work to the official happy talk (“extraordinary patient care” “renowned for going above and beyond”) in the mission statement. You send copies to the offices of the most important doctors with admitting privileges, the local United Way/Red Cross leadership the hospital management likes to hobnob with, the Chamber of Commerce and City Council, the local nursing college that sends students to train there, the major charitable donors, the local alternative press, all the reporters whose bylines have appeared under healthcare stories in the mainstream paper, to the CEOs of other local hospitals, and maybe CC it to the national and regional corporate HQ while you’re at it. You can probably apply the same principle pretty easily in any line of wage employment.

My fear is that the state will put the Internet under lockdown. “National security” legislation has tended to blur the line between “direction action on the job” and “economic terrorism.” They’ve already proposed “smart stamps,” which would require someone to register a street address and provide valid ID to mail a letter. They might try requiring a real, documented identity associated with a street address as a condition of Internet access.

Another possibility is the state itself engaging in covert ops against the radical labor movement, along the lines of COINTELPRO. The deliberate creation of misinformation to control the mindset not only of the “enemy,” but of the domestic public (like there’s a difference to them) has been openly discussed in national security circles.

Autocrat,

Your point is valid IMO as far as it involves the general press–the broadcast media and traditional newspapers. The good thing about network society, though, is we’re not forced to work through broadcast media. It’s possible to “narrow-cast” open mouth sabotage to the specific audience who will be most interested in it: as I mentioned before, the major stakeholders doing business with a corporation, the community where it’s a major institution, etc.

I’m somewhat skeptical though regarding the degree of your optimism as to its mass effect – i.e. “the perfect storm / unbottled-genie” – my thoughts are: perhaps as the more prevalent this practice (hopefully) becomes, the more it will become just another source of general “white-noise” to be filtered and ignored not only be the media, but by consumers as well – i.e., at what point does “open mouth sabotage” become a “fully saturated market”?

If employers can’t suppress the information outright, they may perform “covert ops” to discredit the channel by which malcontents would spread damaging information — at the least, they won’t lobby the government to subsidize that channel or provide honest regulation (though they may use regulation as a tool for suppression).

For example, if email really undermines the governability of workers, then maybe employers will feed the spam monster.

The current system may work well for the moment, but I suspect in the near future we will have to pay more attention to how we validate these communications.